Tuition Express NSFs and Declined Credit Cards
  • 09 Feb 2024
  • 2 Minutes to read

Tuition Express NSFs and Declined Credit Cards


Article Summary

How to process ACH non-sufficient funds and declined credit cards from your Tuition Express account.

How to Process NSFs and Declined Credit Cards

We recommend you do this each day to catch any possible declines from the prior day.

  1. Each time you go to the Process Tuition Express screen (or, as an alternate method you may use the Process Automated Online Posting screen), it checks to see if any prior items have been declined from the bank or credit card companies. If so, you will see a screen like the one below:
    image

  2. Once you select Next, you will go through one or both screens below. One screen is for processing the ACH returns, and the other for credit card declines. Typically you’ll use the descriptions and fees as shown, but you may change them if needed.
    image

Attention! Once you select Next, the charges and negative payments are posted. You cannot undo or go back.
image

Note: You may change the Fee column, but not the Amount since the declined payment must be reversed in its entirety. Procare automatically posts a reversal of the original declined payment as a line item on the individual’s ledger. There is also a separate line for any extra fee you charge. The reversed payments are automatically closed in a deposit report.
3. After clicking Next, you’ll proceed to process any payments as usual.
IMPORTANT! Families that had declines could now owe you more than their typical amount. The best practice is to communicate with the parent to confirm funds are available for you to reprocess. You may uncheck those families, for now, to exclude them from the new batch.

What Goes on the Customer Ledgers?

Below is a sample ledger with a CC return from the above process. Please note the negative payment amount, and the lock indicating the deposit report has already been created:

image

Deposit Report and Posting Dates

The “exception date” is the actual date that Tuition Express receives the decline for the NSF or credit card. Credit card declines almost always occur the same day. ACH returns for non-sufficient funds may take 2-5 days. The resulting Deposit Reports are dated in the following way:

  • ACH – All items returned on the same “exception date” are grouped into a single Deposit Report. The comment will be “ACH Returns – ”.
  • Credit Card Returns – There may be multiple Deposit Reports for credit card declines for a specific day. If 5 batches were submitted, and 2 had returns, there would be two separate Deposit Reports, one per batch. Comment will be “CC Declines – ”.

Redeposit with Tuition Express

You may process the payment through Tuition Express, a second time, however, you should check with the family to make sure funds are available. If the parent does not have enough available in their bank account, another option is to collect a Point of Sale credit card payment or Payment at Check-In from the family.

Deposit Reports & Redeposits

This series of transactions will affect three different Deposit Reports.

  1. Once when the original payment was deposited.
  2. A second time for the NSF check (or declined credit card) shown as a negative.
  3. And a third time when the payment is redeposited.

This is truly the way it happened and the total amount deposited will be correct.


Was this article helpful?